Why cant I get this show
I totally loved the Magician when I was in my early teens but I can't seem to find it anywhere on video or DVD.
Does anyone know where to get the show?
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Thanks for that.
There are some great old US shows on there. I will have a look and a detailed read.
I also was inspired to become a magician because of this show. Would love to get it on DVD.
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To me its the classic issue of two shows with one central character.
I loved the first series where he lived on a plane. How cool is that. But then it went down hill for me. Still good in parts but it is clear that they were running out of enthusiasm.
I still love the theme music. The "Spirit" lives on
I ALSO LOVE THIS SHOW. THE CHARACTER WAS CHARISMATIC & BELIEVABLE. MY FATHER ONCE TOLD ME BILL BIXBY STARTED HIS CAREER AS A MAGICIAN, IS THAT TRUE? ANY WAY I HOPE WE CAN FIND OUT WHERE TO GET THIS SERIES (ALTHOUGH TOO SHORT) ON DVD OR EVEN VHS!!!
shareHello from a warm and sunny London.
I got my copes from EBAY. They are not that good and in fact its clear that they were taped by someone from the Sci-Fi Channel as The Magician was shown there some time back.
Other than that I still dont think that the show has been released on video or DVD.
I am not sure if Bill B started as a magician but I know that for the show he performed the magic live and for real. I understand that he was a very clever man and could speak many languages.
Have a look on EBAY to see if you can pick up a copy.
Bill Bixby did not start his career as a magician. He started out to earn a law degree but became an actor instead. He developed an interest in magic, was trained by Mark Wilson and became quite good at it, as can be seen in the series.
And no, Paramount still has not issued an official release of this series in any region. It doesn't make sense. I have all the episodes on VHS...somewhere...from when it ran on Sci-Fi Channel, but I would prefer an official release. (It'll sure beat having to transfer all of those shows to DVD myself)! They waited too long to make for a great bonus feature section (just think of the interviews we could have seen with Bill Bixby or Keene Curtis), but they could treat us to an interview/update with Todd Crespi as a bonus. I'm sure he'd be happy to talk about his experiences working on the series.
Bixby was a multi-talented man. He became interested in magic and actually became pretty good at it. I had the pleasure of working with him a couple of times toward the end of his life. A kind and very creative guy and with the now-retired Jackie Cooper, one of the two best directors I ever worked with in television.
Also, Bill did a network TV show with James,(The Amazing,)Randi called, I think, 'The $10,000 Psychic Challenge.' The premise was to offer the reward to anyone who could prove the existence of any of the usual paranormal nitwittery; astrology, aura reading, etc. Suffice to say, the ten grand stayed in the hands of the grown-ups and the psychics went away mumbling to themselves.
Too bad we lost Bill Bixby so young and that Jack retired.
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Ink-eternal:
Man you are totally lame. We're here to share opinions. That's why this board exists. That's why the internet exists. Shouting down someone that has an opinion that is different from yours...well I don't want to call you any more names.
>Your opinion is just that, YOUR opinion and is NOT fact.
Thanks for educating me on that. I never knew that my opinion was MY opinion. You are really eloquent.
>Fact is many of us fans think this is an excellent show...
The same could be said for anything. Many of Satan's fans think he's an excellent guy. Many of Hitler's fans think he is excellent. You have a talent for running your mouth and saying absolutely nothing. Since your "fact" is that some people think "The Magician" is a good show, I've got a "fact" of my own: a lot of "The Magician's" detractors think it's a lousy show. In fact, ALL of "The Magician's" detractors think it's a lousy show. So there, my fact is bigger than your fact since your fact only has "many" and my fact has "all."
I wonder if you have read "The Magician" FAQs (which I wrote) or the episode list (where I am the only reviewer and I have 6 reviews). If you had you would know that I am a big fan of "The Magician" and I love the show. Also, rather than just whining about a DVD set that will only be released if the studio sees that many thousands of sets will sell (not some measly few hundred from a delusional petition), I am contributing to vicarious reliving of the show by writing about it. But even though I am a big fan of the show, that can’t change the fact that there was a writer’s strike and the show got put on the defense, and unfortunately, it’s not a great show on average.
Finally, your rating of my writing as “pompous” does not flatter me, because it’s so easy to use words that you don’t understand and therefore earn that rating from you. You’re a waste of bandwidth, and so was this reply to you.
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Hi Ink-Eternal:
I can be a fan of a show and still recognize that it's not a great show. I'm a big fan of "The Magician." I love this show. I love Bill Bixby, I love the magic, I love a lot of stuff about it. In some ways this show even changed my life. But I was 13 years old in 1973 - my critical standards were a lot lower. I still have a lot of nostalgic love but that doesn't prevent me from seeing or admitting that it's not a great show. Another example is the movie "The Temp," with Timothy Hutton and Laura Flynn Boyle. Now that's a really lousy movie, but I still love it. I love "Waterworld" with Keven Costner, but lots of people think that's a bad movie. Sometimes it doesn't matter.
You obviously never graduated from high school English class. If you had, you would know that inserting "I think, I feel, to me, and my opinion" is bad writing style. The reader knows it's my opinion because I wrote it.
Unlike you, who does claim to speak for others, and who even claims to speak for me (when you say that I am not a fan), I don't claim to speak for anyone else when I say "it's not a great show." I never said "no one thinks this is a great show."
I don't mind someone making comments on my opinion; in fact I welcome and enjoy that, that's why I'm here participating. But I like it to be an intelligent discussion, not some simpleton shouting me down. I don't enjoy conversing with thugs.
You assume a lot about me, but you're all wrong. I was not a Lloyd Nolan fan until I saw him in "The Magician." I've been fascinated with "The Magician" (and Bill Bixby) since 1973 when I first saw it. I went to the trouble of buying a DVD set off of eBay and watching all the episodes. And, even though you want to speak for me and assume the contrary, I'm a giant fan of the show.
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Ink-Eternal:
Whoooooaaa! Dude what a turn around. I guess your love for "The Magician" and its fans (that would be me) exceeds your intolerance for pomposity (also me). You remind me of a nice lady with whom I used to work. Ordinarily very nice. But if there was a big stack of paperwork on her desk she was likely to jump down your throat. I think you forgave me because you realized I was like your mom, who likes to nit-pick plot holes, in contrast to you, who likes to suspend disbelief and just enjoy whatever the show has to offer. Anyway, whatever the case, thanks for the apology, from one TM fan to another.
Well, since we've drifted soo far off topic with this pointless bickering, let me try to get back on topic and say that I got my DVD set from eBay. It's a copy from the SciFi channel. Sure, I'd rather have a studio set with special features, etc, but as it is this is the first time I've seen even one minute of "The Magician" since 1974, so I still greatly enjoy it. I wonder how the studios make decisions on when to produce a DVD set. Depending on how much effort they put into the special features and interviews, etc, I wonder what the cost is for a one season set, I guess it varies greatly, but does $100K buy anything, or does it start at $1M or what? Then they have to compute some kind of breakeven point. One thing is, they have to be sure the sets they send out will sell in the retail outlets. Because if they don't they will bounce back to them as unsold returns, and that can eat their lunch. What do you guess is their minimum sell forecast to make it worth it: 10K units? 100K units? 1M units? Let's say a 1 season set sells for $30. 10K units is $300K gross retail. That's not even pocket change. 100K units is $3M, that's probably less than the noise on their balance sheet. 500K would be $15M, give half that to retail and you're left with $7.5M, maybe that might start to sound interesting to them. I wonder.
On another, but related, topic: I just went to an "Astroworld employees reunion" a few weeks ago. FYI: Astroworld was a Six Flags amusement park here in Houston that operated from 1968 until it was torn down recently. I worked there in the last 1970s. One of my colleagues at the reunion used to work for Mark Wilson in California, helping him produce his amusement park magic shows all over the country, along with whatever other work they did there. Another colleague helped Mr. Wilson set up the magic show when Mr. Wilson was first contracted by Six Flags to put a show in at Astroworld. Unfortunately I did not get to talk much with the lady that worked in California.
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I hope this series will make it to DVD, it was a great show.
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